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Headlines:
Junta Wins Big, Builds Escape Hatch
Five Years, Five Thousand Dead
Sixteen Executions, Seven Days, One Message
Moscow and Naypyidaw Lock Arms Through 2030
ASEAN's Quiet One Takes the Junta to Court
Junta Collars Its Own Gold Dealers
Five Years In, Still Killing
Chin Forces Score Big as Airstrikes Miss the Point
Junta Chief Blames Poor for Poverty
Junta Wins Big, Builds Escape Hatch
Myanmar's military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party won 739 of 1,025 parliamentary seats in elections that wrapped up January 25, handing it control of both national and provincial assemblies with enough votes to appoint a president without outside help. The three-phase vote excluded the National League for Democracy, which swept over 80% of seats in 2020, and skipped 67 townships entirely where rebels control territory. About 13.1 million of 24.2 million eligible voters turned out, roughly half the 2020 figure, in polling the UN called neither free nor fair and run under laws that saw 404 people charged and nine slapped with sentences of up to 49 years in jail. But just as results came in, junta chief Min Aung Hlaing signed legislation creating a Union Consultative Council, a five-member body with broad powers over national security, legislation, the military and the civilian government. The council chairman, appointed by the president, would sit above the executive, legislature and judiciary with no mechanism for accountability. If Min Aung Hlaing takes the chairman role after someone else becomes president, he keeps effective control without giving up his commander-in-chief post, which the 2008 constitution bars a president from holding.
Read more: AP News (Seat distribution), Straits Times (Election vote count), Nation Thailand (Power consolidation), The Irrawaddy (Civilian escape), The Diplomat (Seat percentages), The Irrawaddy (Seat allocation), Scroll In (Economic trajectory), Mizzima (Power transition), Rappler (ASEAN diplomacy), The Hindu (Voting geography)
Five Years, Five Thousand Dead
The National Unity Government has published a five-year accounting of the military's work since the 2021 coup, and the numbers are grim. 5,188 civilians killed, 4,750 airstrikes, and 1,272 hospitals, schools, and religious buildings destroyed. The report documents 501 massacres during the period. NUG spokesman Nay Phone Latt pointed to new tactics like using civilians as human shields and systematically destroying wells, ponds, and clinics to make whole communities uninhabitable. Human Rights Watch reported 2,165 airstrikes between January and late November 2025, up from 1,716 in all of 2024. The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project put 2025's death toll near 14,000, making Myanmar the deadliest of the 50 conflicts it tracks globally. Half the population now lives below the national poverty line, 3.6 million people have been displaced, and inflation is running hot at more than 30 percent.
Read more: Mizzima (NUG death-count), Mizzima (UN displacement), Mizzima (local airstrike), Mizzima (monastery casualties), Asiasentinel (civil war overview)
Sixteen Executions, Seven Days, One Message
China put 16 Myanmar nationals to death in less than a week, most of them family syndicate leaders who ran scam compounds that kept Chinese citizens in forced labor operations. The executions are one of the largest clusters of death sentences Beijing has handed down in recent decades. Myanmar handed over the suspects despite having little history of executing crime bosses. Other Southeast Asian countries may have little choice but to cooperate too, with China now showing what one analyst called "merciless resolve" to protect its citizens abroad. At the same time, however, Beijing has spent the past year forcing Myanmar's ethnic armed groups to stand down just as they closed in on Mandalay, the junta's second-largest city. Chinese pressure on the MNDAA and TNLA, including sealed borders and asset seizures, has led to a reversal in resistance gains that had pushed within 22 kilometers of the city. The junta's PM thanked China last week for its "constructive support" in Myanmar's peace process, a polite way of acknowledging that Beijing's intervention saved the regime from a potentially fatal blow while allowing it to redeploy troops for a northern Mandalay counteroffensive.
Read more: South China Morning Post
Moscow and Naypyidaw Lock Arms Through 2030
Myanmar's junta signed a military cooperation pact with Russia extending through 2030, announced after Kremlin security chief Sergei Shoigu visited Naypyidaw on Monday. Moscow promised "complete assistance, including in the international arena," a promise that matters most as diplomatic cover at the UN, where Russia holds a Security Council veto. The deal somewhat formalizes what's already become obvious. Shoigu told junta officials that "Western pressure on Russia and Myanmar will not cease," framing the pact as a pariah-state compact. Neither side shared specifics of the deal beyond vague language about "defense cooperation."
Read more: CNA
ASEAN's Quiet One Takes the Junta to Court
East Timor filed war crimes charges against Min Aung Hlaing and his military leadership, the first time one ASEAN member has prosecuted another. The case file details the gang rape of a seven-month pregnant woman in front of her husband, the massacre of ten people including a 13-year-old boy among eight who had their hands tied and throats cut, the killing of a pastor and three deacons, and an air strike on a hospital that killed four medical staff and four patients. East Timor's prosecutors are using universal jurisdiction, the same legal principle that let Spain go after Chile's Pinochet. The Chin Human Rights Organization, which brought the evidence to Dili, says there’s a sort of solidarity between two peoples who've faced military violence. Whether the case gains traction or gets quietly shelved will be a sign of how far ASEAN's youngest member is willing to break with the bloc's non-interference habit.
Read more: Pressenza
Junta Collars Its Own Gold Dealers
The regime arrested three top Yangon gold association officials for allegedly buying and reselling gold bars at inflated prices. Association chairman U Myo Myint bought eight 70-tical (a tical is ~16.33 grams) bars in January, while vice chairman U Myo Thu Win moved 950 ticals and secretary U Nay Myo Htet moved 268 ticals between December and January, all at unofficial rates. The Military Commission claims they destabilized the market despite being the ones responsible for keeping price stability. The junta told remaining traders to fall in line or expect the same treatment.
Read more: Bnionline
Five Years In, Still Killing
Myanmar's military coup hit the five-year mark on February 1. The Burma Human Rights Network counts more than 30,000 political prisoners detained since the generals seized power, with President Win Myint and Aung San Suu Kyi still locked up on charges nobody takes seriously. Mosques haven't fared better than churches: soldiers raided a Sagaing mosque during Friday prayers in August, grabbing 10 Muslim youths, then repeated the exercise at a Shwebo mosque in September. Myanmar's cities have mostly dodged the fighting but blackouts, inflation, and a gutted health system mean urban residents are desperate too. The International Court of Justice is hearing a genocide case brought by The Gambia, but rulings take years and enforcement is anyone's guess.
Read more: Muslimnetwork Tv (UN perspective), Myanmar-Now (Conflict data), Mizzima (Rights violations), New York Times (Urban impact), Pressenza (Exile protest)
Chin Forces Score Big as Airstrikes Miss the Point
Chin National Army fighters killed 36 junta troops, including a major, and seized 33 weapons in an attack near Falam Township, where resistance forces have held the town since late October. The junta column, part of a 300-strong reinforcement from Kalay, took 20 more wounded before Chin forces withdrew from the captured camp to avoid drone surveillance. No resistance fighters were killed. The junta now controls just two of Chin State's nine townships; revolutionary forces hold the rest.
Read more: Mizzima (CNA battle details), Myanmar-Now (Air raid threat), Timesofindia Indiatimes (Border tourism impact)
Junta Chief Blames Poor for Poverty
Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing told military trainees 3 that poverty stems from citizens failing to pursue personal development and education. A June 2025 UNDP report found Yangon's poverty rate has risen from 10% to 43% between 2017 and 2023, while ISP-Myanmar data from January showed foreign investment has fallen nearly 75% over the years following the coup. The general also blamed some officials for corruption and lacking patriotic spirit after failing to salute the flag, though he didn't connect those dots to the economic collapse happening under his watch.
Read more: Mizzima
That's all for this week, thanks for reading. Your voice matters to us. Feel we're missing something? Have additional sources to suggest? Don't hold back- hit reply and tell us what you think.
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